jQuery Love: Microsoft’s CDN Service for Microsoft AJAX Library and jQuery

A few weeks back, Microsoft announced a new content delivery network (CDN) that supports hosting for both the Microsoft AJAX libraries and the jQuery library. This is an exciting development and big step toward improving the performance of AJAX applications: by referencing the libraries hosted on the CDN, you can rest assured that users hitting your website will be served a copy of the library from a server local to their location.

The move also highlights Microsoft's commitment to supporting the jQuery library.  Not only does the CDN host jQuery 1.3.2, it also hosts the jQuery VSDOC file, which provides intellisense for jQuery from within Visual Studio. (For more on using jQuery with Visual Studio, see http://blogs.msdn.com/webdevtools/archive/2008/11/18/jscript-intellisense-faq.aspx.) In addition, the CDN hosts the popular plug-in jQuery.Validate, which makes adding client-side validation to forms very easy.

If it isn’t clear yet, Microsoft—and we at Mix Online —are big fans of jQuery.  In fact, we’ll be updating Mix Online itself to use the jQuery from Microsoft’s CDN shortly.  And the next versions of Oomph and Glimmer will use the CDN, as will a jQuery-dependent project I’m currently working on (top secret!).

For more about Mix Online’s support for jQuery, check out Glimmer (an interactive designer for jQuery). And for more general info, check out Yehuda Katz's article on The Rise of jQuery and Dave Ward's piece on ASP.NET Developers and jQuery.

You can read more about the new CDN here. Below you'll find the short version—with all the URLs you need to know:

Microsoft Ajax Releases on the CDN:

Microsoft Ajax version 0909 (preview)

http://ajax.microsoft.com/ajax/beta/0909/MicrosoftAjax.js

http://ajax.microsoft.com/ajax/beta/0909/MicrosoftAjax.debug.js

http://ajax.microsoft.com/ajax/beta/0909/MicrosoftAjaxAdoNet.js

http://ajax.microsoft.com/ajax/beta/0909/MicrosoftAjaxAdoNet.debug.js

http://ajax.microsoft.com/ajax/beta/0909/MicrosoftAjaxDataContext.js

http://ajax.microsoft.com/ajax/beta/0909/MicrosoftAjaxDataContext.debug.js

http://ajax.microsoft.com/ajax/beta/0909/MicrosoftAjaxTemplates.js

http://ajax.microsoft.com/ajax/beta/0909/MicrosoftAjaxTemplates.debug.js

http://ajax.microsoft.com/ajax/beta/0909/MicrosoftAjaxWebForms.js

http://ajax.microsoft.com/ajax/beta/0909/MicrosoftAjaxWebForms.debug.js

jQuery Releases on the CDN:

jQuery version 1.3.2

http://ajax.microsoft.com/ajax/jQuery/jquery-1.3.2.js

http://ajax.microsoft.com/ajax/jQuery/jquery-1.3.2.min.js

http://ajax.microsoft.com/ajax/jQuery/jquery-1.3.2-vsdoc.js

http://ajax.microsoft.com/ajax/jQuery/jquery-1.3.2.min-vsdoc.js

jQuery Validation Releases on the CDN:

jQuery Validate 1.5.5

http://ajax.microsoft.com/ajax/jquery.validate/1.5.5/jquery.validate.js

http://ajax.microsoft.com/ajax/jquery.validate/1.5.5/jquery.validate.min.js

http://ajax.microsoft.com/ajax/jquery.validate/1.5.5/jquery.validate-vsdoc.js